


What they truly are

by littlehollyleaf



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Pre-Slash, Team Free Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 11:32:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4347014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlehollyleaf/pseuds/littlehollyleaf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of a very literal Darkness, Sam and Dean try to find Castiel in the black.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What they truly are

"Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are"  
~ _Blindness_ , Jose Saramago

  
  


Imagine nothing.

Nothing, everywhere. Surrounding you on all sides. Pressing in until the world sharpens to a single devastating point. 

Nothing, but you. 

Isolated. 

Alone. 

Seeing, nothing. Feeling, nothing. Until it seems that you too must surely be -

Once again Sam reaches out and twists his fingers into the coarse, heavy fabric of his brother's jacket, seeking reassurance of another's presence, of another's movement and warmth to prove there is life within this awful blackness that even the stars can't penetrate.

Dangerous as it is feeling their way down the crumbling stairs in such pitch, Dean reaches back and grips Sam's cuff, holding Sam to him as they continue their descent. Similarly eager, Sam thinks, for physical comfort. With his other hand clutching their sole remaining flashlight, currently off in an effort to preserve it from the mysterious power that has already extinguished the others, this leaves Sam unsteady, no hand free to properly balance himself, completely reliant on Dean to guide him. 

Not that Dean can see any better.

They are, Sam reflects, the very definition of the blind leading the blind.

Dean will either lead them safely to their destination, or headfirst into danger or death. 

Though for Sam it makes little odds which of these Dean takes them to, he'll follow his brother regardless.

A few more steps down and a couple of shuffles forward and they find themselves at the bottom of the staircase. Safe after all. The relative ease of surer footing leaves them confident enough to detach themselves from each other, although Sam keeps one shoulder brushed up against Dean's as he moves to his side.

"Can't hear anything," Sam whispers. 

There's something about the dark that makes you want to keep your voice low. A sensible precaution, perhaps, against disturbing anything within, fear of the unknown creating suspicion of something hostile lurking out of sight. Though in truth, Sam doesn't think it's fear of something _inside_ the dark holding their tongues.

"Maybe they're not here," Dean whispers back, and relief washes over Sam as clear and fresh as every other time he's heard Dean's voice since the lights went out. "God knows how long we were on the road, for all we know Cas cleared out days ago."

"It hasn't been days... I don't... I don't think it's been..." Sam trails off, swallowing. 

Time is hard, without sun or moon. He used to check his watch, but stopped once it was clear the light required to do so had become a limited resource. And their journey had been arduous to say the least. Clearing the Impala from the pothole they'd fallen in just as the new world order struck had taken an age, hours maybe. Then there were more hours eaten up on the road as they crept forward inch by agonising inch, headlights on full beam illuminating little more than the patch of asphalt directly in front of them. Until those too had succumbed to the night, along with the rest of the car, forcing Sam and Dean to make the remainder of their journey on foot. 

If Dean had been upset at leaving his baby behind, at risk of being lost forever in the black, he hadn't said anything. And unable to see his expression, Sam had no way of judging his brother's feeling. 

It had been the right choice though, Sam thinks in retrospect, since the closer they got to civilisation the more difficult it would have become to drive around the increasing number of other abandoned vehicles. Often mangled. Smashed together in horrible collisions Sam assumes must have happened in those first few minutes, when business as usual changed in the blink of an eye - one blink speeding down a freeway, next blink you can't see the road, can't even see the steering wheel. Even the coolest head might veer off-course. 

The number of casualties - of fatalities - and all of them squarely on his shoulders, his and Dean's and Cas', doesn't bare thinking about. Sam was almost glad of the dark then, of the way it prevented them seeing what flesh and blood tragedies remained inside the broken machinery.

But days? No. They'd have grown hungry. Collapsed. Unless - 

Unless the dark was sustaining them, somehow. Keeping them alive for it's own, nefarious purpose.

Sam puts his hand out again, but this time Dean's shifting, stepping forward. Just out of Sam's reach.

"Cas?" Dean calls. His voice sounds thin, straining to be heard over the impenetrable nothing. 

Nothing roars, deafening, back.

"Cas!" Sam mimics, the cry rasping at the back of his throat. Then after a moment he tries, "Rowena?"

"We need to move further in," Dean says, and Sam imagines him looking back over his shoulder, expression resolute, sharing his strength with a brief nod and encouraging catch of Sam's eye. Not the first time Sam's filled in the blanks with a Dean of his own making, a patchwork phantom of memory and dream. How closely his brother resembles his creation Sam can't say, but he takes courage from the fiction regardless.

"Okay," he nods in imitation of the simulacrum. 

They shuffle forward a few paces.

No change.

"Try the light," Dean mutters.

Sam does, clicking it to maximum, and they are rewarded with a weak glow that hangs about their faces like mist. Dean's shirt is a different colour to how Sam has been remembering it - dark crimson, not plaid. His eyes linger only a moment on Sam's before darting from place to place, testing the limits of what little vision the light affords, teeth worrying his bottom lip. Far from a picture of resolve. 

The press of a palm against his back makes Sam flinch at first, before the familiar weight and Dean's look of apology reveal the truth of it. 

"Come on..." 

Though Dean pushes Sam into the first step, they continue on together, Dean's touch more for support than guidance. They move slowly, calling Cas' name and sometimes Rowena's with every other step, Sam alternating between keeping the light at shoulder height and towards the ground, weary of obstacles in their path. Soon, Sam thinks, there should be the table he'd had Rowena use for decoding the Book of the Damned, or perhaps the pillar he'd chained her to. But the soft beam picks out only the faintest outlines of dust balls and the grey of the stone floor. He lifts it up again.

Another step and Sam's foot catches beneath something unexpected. He stumbles and falls, dropping heavily on top of the thing, flashlight falling with him and hitting stone with a dull thud. Its glow flickers.

"Sam? Sam!" Dean's voice above him is muted, as though heard from underwater. 

"I'm okay," he answers. "I'm okay, hold on."

Pressing down with his free hand, Sam tries to push himself up, but his palm slips, something wet oozing between his fingers. He risks putting his weight on the flickering light instead, trying to shift his legs off this damp, strangely soft thing and find firmer ground. His knees slide onto stone and he pats his hand across the mystery object to gauge if it is solid enough to lean on, feeling his fingers coat in more liquid, thicker this time and sticky, with a smell Sam recognises. A metallic tang that grows overwhelming the closer Sam gets, clogging up his throat and making him gag. 

Jerking back, Sam manages to draw himself onto his knees. After a series of deep breaths he lifts the flashlight and smacks it into his other palm. The wetness smears unpleasantly across his skin, but the hit turns the flickering back into a steady glow, no stronger than before but no weaker either.

"Sam? What's going on? I can't... the light's not strong enough..."

The ghost of a touch skirts over Sam's hair - Dean waving a hand, trying to find him. Or perhaps there's nothing, and it's just more wishful thinking.

"Hold on... hold on..." Sam breathes, moving the light forward, across black fabric and up to a belt. Cas wore black pants, didn't he? "Oh god... please... please..." Are the words spoken or just in his head? Either way, they probably won't be heard, are probably already swallowed by the black, so Sam keeps them up as he moves the light along the body. "Please, not Cas... not Cas too..."

A black jacket, red shirt. No. No not red. Or not supposed to be. The flesh beneath is torn as viciously as the material that once covered it, blood that must once have been gushing from the wounds now congealed in dark, sickening clumps. Black jacket. No trench coat. Holding his breath, Sam moves the light on, passed the gaping maw of neck, and over Crowley's glassy, sightless eyes. 

Crowley. Thank god.

But the relief is short lived, because something still did this to the demon. Something that could still be here, could still be close. And as he thinks it, somewhere out in the nothing, _something_ makes itself known.

A vibration in the air. A noise in the dark that makes Sam shiver.

It's faint at first, low, but grows and grows and _growls._

Sam's pulse rises along with the sound, beating a matching crescendo as he stares into the black and finds, impossibly, something staring back at him. Wide eyes, not glass like Crowley's but very much alive, though they seem sightless all the same, bloodshot and unfocused, pupils too large for Sam to make out a colour. All he sees is that they are set in a pale face, the white more vivid in contrast to the horrid tracks of crimson down the cheeks and splashed about the mouth. 

Before Sam can even gasp out his fear the face is moving, rising, rushing forward. It's ironic - the first thing Sam has seen clearly in what feels like forever and he finds himself closing his eyes to it, throwing up his arms and bracing for the impact of the creature's attack.

Instead, he's thrust aside, flashlight dropping away to be finally lost in the dark.

"Dean!" Sam warns, but it's too late, his groping hands find only absence in place of his brother. 

It's the first time they've been separated, the first time Sam has been wholly unaware of Dean's presence in relation to his own, since the Mark was cured, and if he was afraid before it was but a shadow of the horror that pulses through him now. Because this is the very thing of his nightmares, his deepest dread - Dean consumed by darkness. Dean lost to him.

"Dean! DEAN!" Scrambling to his feet, Sam waves his arms in all directions. "DEAN!"

Too late he sees the error in his act of desperation. He turned in his search, circling as he swung his arms, enough to lose all sense of where he is. Kicking out with his feet reveals only empty space, even Crowley's body now out of reach, and Sam has no idea in which direction it might lie, let alone where the pale, bloodied monster might have taken Dean.

Because yes, though Sam heard no sound, no cry or scuffle of a fight, he knows the monster took his brother, that he cast Sam aside to get to Dean. Knows it because in that last moment before he closed his eyes, Sam caught a flash of tan and saw the creature for who he was, recognised the bloody markings on his face and knew the truth.

And Cas, enchanted or otherwise, would of course look to Dean first.

" _Dean..._ " Sam chokes, taking a step forward and then faltering. What if this step takes him further away from his brother? He twists and tries another step. Stops again. "Dean... Cas..."

He stares about him, knowing it's futile but at a loss for what else to try, straining to see anything, even the faintest glimmer of an outline, than might give him an idea of where to go.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Everywhere, everything, nothing.

Sam's breath catches and he presses a hand to his mouth, trying to hold himself together. But all he can think is that Dean could be out there dying right now, and he can't get to him and it's _his fault_. His fault. His. Fault. He left Cas with Rowena. He agreed to come here for Cas instead of going straight to the bunker. Oh god, to think that after saving Dean from Lucifer, from the Mark, after pulling Dean back from Death himself, this is where Sam fails - he can save Dean from spirits and monsters and even from himself, albeit at a cost, but he can't save Dean from his friends, can't save him from his family. 

Stopit _stopit_ , Sam tells himself, scrunching his eyes shut and pressing a forefinger and thumb against the lids to hold back the hysteria threatening to spill from them. There's a way out of this. There _has_ to be. He just can't _see it_ yet.

A breath and Sam blinks his eyes open again. As he draws his hand away he notices how blackened his fingertips have become with dust and grime from feeling his way along walls. He wipes at his face with a sleeve to clear any marks he may have left there, grateful he'd kept the bloodstained one by his side, otherwise he would have - 

Wait.

Slowly, Sam lifts his hand back in front of his eyes, scanning over the chips in his fingernails, the lines around the joints of his fingers, the jut of his knuckles and the light tan of his skin. All darkened, as though in shadow, but visible.

He looks up, turns a step to his left and there it is - a light in the dark.

For a moment it looks like shining rain, or tears, cascading down. Vibrant drops falling, yet leaving glowing white hanging in the black in their place. On instinct Sam holds out his hands, palms upwards, as though to catch, and as he moves closer he sees the dropping lights have shape, almost substance. Not like droplets, more like falling leaves, or -

Feathers.

The light solidifies into the shape of a man, body pressed against another. 

Dean. 

Blood rushes in Sam's ears, a surge of adrenaline holding him tense as he takes in the sight, not yet sure which to embrace - relief or terror.

Cas has his face buried in Dean's neck, back and shoulders shaking, and Sam pictures the wet mess of Crowley's throat. His stomach drops. He hurries forward.

But stops when Dean, eyes wide and blinking as they peer through the newfound light, lifts a hand, palm out in a stilling gesture. His gaze follows the falling lights for a moment as Sam's had only moments before, lips parting, face growing soft and almost boyish, and Sam's fears of his brother in pain melt away. Instead, there's a memory of fireworks, of Dean's skin warmed by glowing bursts of colour. An image so vivid Sam has to shake his head to return to the present. The movement brings Dean's focus back to him and he pushes the air a couple of times with his outstretched arm. The message is clear. Stay back. Just wait. Sam nods, holding still, and notices Dean's other arm wrapped around Cas, trench coat bunched up in Dean's hand where he's gripping tight, trying to still Cas' shaking. Or, not shaking, but trembling. Not attacking, no. Sam can hear Cas' ragged breaths now, shallow and hitching, fighting back sobs. 

"Cas?" Dean tries. "Buddy? You okay?" Cas' breathing quiets and calms. "I know it's dark, but... well, we're here now, okay. We're gonna... we're gonna find a way out of this."

He doesn't know, Sam realises. Dean hasn't seen Cas' face, doesn't know about the bloody marks and the magic behind them. He thinks Cas is just overwhelmed by the relentlessness of the void, like so many others they'd passed on the way. 

The first few times they'd veered close enough to hear sobbing they'd stopped and sought it out, tried to console, but it was no use. The people they found either ignored them - alone in the dark, still, despite Sam and Dean's presence and the glow of their lights, unresponsive to words or movement or even touch. Or else they grew crazed at the presence of another - clutching Sam and Dean tight and begging not to be left alone again, grabbing at clothes and hair, scratching skin, until Sam and Dean were forced to fight them off. Eventually they'd learnt to ignore the weeping and press on until it faded. Sam wonders if Dean's heart ached as much as his own with each pitiful cry, a weight in his chest that grew heavier and heavier each step they took away from the sound. 

Perhaps Cas is similarly afflicted. But even so, Sam knows it's not all their friend suffers. He wants to warn his brother of the danger, but doesn't dare. Cas is calm for the moment, in this quiet, and it doesn't surprise Sam, somehow, that the savagery Rowena has unleashed inside Castiel should be soothed by Dean's arms.

"Cas?" Dean breathes, free arm hovering uncertainly from Cas' waist to his head, as though looking to comfort but not sure how, not sure if he should. "You with me?"

A jerk of movement as Cas shifts, head turning, but not enough to be seen. His own arm reaches up from below, fingers lacing about Dean's forearm while his thumb traces a circle over Dean's jacket, thumbnail to knuckle caked in something that Sam might once have called black but now seems pale in comparison to their surroundings. Dean frowns, eyes darting from Cas' hands to Sam, and down, harsh shadows beginning to form across his newly illuminated face. 

Sam follows the gaze to the blood on his own hand, and when his eyes lift they find Dean's meeting his in a question. One Sam can't seem to find voice to answer. Still scared to break this spell of calm. 

A rasping breath cracks the air.

"It's gone. It... it worked?" 

Though his voice is scratchy, the relief in Cas' tone is unmistakable and speaks of hardships not suffered in vain. The deep, heartfelt belief that if Dean is well then it was worth it, it was _all_ worth it. 

Dean presses his lips into a hard line and the way he glares at Sam - the cold, unyielding weight of his eyes - makes Sam wonder for a moment if the cure was as absolute as the surrounding devastation claims it to be. 

They haven't talked about it, about the full extent of the price paid for Dean's life. But Sam doesn't need to see or hear from his brother to know he disapproves of the trade.

"Oh yeah," Dean answers. "Whatever you guys did burned the Mark right off."

Cas' sigh is a physical thing, expressed more in the sag of his shoulders and the way he presses his forehead into the fabric of Dean's collar than the brief exhale of air from his lips. And with it comes a fresh pulse of light, burning from some indeterminate core and spreading out, pulling back more of the dark like a hand lifting a curtain. To Sam's right the table he'd been searching for earlier is exposed, Cas' light offering him glimpses of herbs and spices, candles, the dull copper shine of a bowl and the glint of a blade - trappings of magic. And underneath the table, in the shadows - something more. Something long and dark, something with limbs. 

No. 

Someone. 

Some _one_.

"Thank god," Cas mutters, hands moving to tug at the flaps of Dean's jacket. "I thought I... I wasn't sure I'd last long enough to see..."

"What do you mean?" Dean's hand clenches tighter about Cas' shoulder.

Cas only shudders out a couple of breaths in answer and this time there's not just a question but the beginnings of fear in Dean's eyes when he looks to Sam, eyebrows drawn tight together. Then his gaze flicks beyond Sam and down and his eyes narrow.

Sam spins round on instinct, hand reaching for his gun, but there's no enemy behind him. Just the brutalised corpse he'd stumbled over earlier, even more gruesome in the light. One of Crowley's ears is missing, Sam realises. And his fingers look strange, kind of squashed, with bits missing from them as well. 

Chewed. That's it. They looked chewed.

No, there's no enemy here.

When Sam turns back, Dean's other arm has found Cas after all, laid across his waist, hand gripping as tight there as the one on Cas' shoulder. As though Dean hopes to contain Cas' darkness by the circle of his arms alone.

"Cas..." Sam starts. Swallows. "Cas, where's Rowena?"

A breath, then -

"She's gone," Cas answers. "She took the Book, and the codex. I'm sorry I... I couldn't... She did something to me."

"Did what?" Dean is looking at the top of Cas' head, waiting for him to turn, and Sam recognises the resolve he'd imagined in his brother before. 

Time for the calm to break then. For the illusion of peace to end.

And yet when Cas draws away, Sam notes that Dean doesn't relinquish his hold easily, instead keeping his hands on Cas until their friend has pulled all the way back and moved to stand between them. Face lifted.

Dean doesn't flinch at the marks, but his jaw clenches.

" _Impetus bestiarum_ ," Sam says, remembering the words Rowena had used on that poor girl before. The one he'd failed to save. Cas flicks bloodshot eyes to him and nods.

"No way that works on angels," Dean scoffs, and Sam knows the tone well. That particular twang of self-assured disbelief. His brother's way of refusing an idea, even evidence, set before him because it clashes with his own personal worldview.

This stubborn trait in Dean has infuriated Sam more times than he can count, but never made his chest tighten quite as painfully tight as it does now.

"Rowena was stronger than we knew." Cas starts to gasp. "Crowley was... similarly caught off guard when she... set me on him..." He bends over, gulping in breath after breath like a marathon runner just across the finishing line, and Sam and Dean share a look, equally helplessness. Dean's denial ripped away in the face of their friend's all too physical struggle. "I don't know if he... if he left the vessel before I... I -" Cas chokes, hands curling into white-knuckled fists at his sides, eyes pressing together as if to blot out the vision of his memories. The light emanating from him flickers for a moment, then holds steady. "I couldn't fight it - I - I couldn't..."

"Hey, hey." Dean takes a step forward, hand raised, voice soft, but doesn't quite complete the distance between him and Cas. "It's not your fault, man." 

"Yeah," Sam hurries to reassure, glad to be able to follow Dean's lead. A dangerous Cas is one thing, he knows how to deal with that. But an emotional Cas? That's something completely outside Sam's understanding. That's always been more Dean's thing. "And you know," he shrugs. "It was only Crowley." From the glare Dean shoots him Sam gathers this was the wrong thing to say so he tries changing the subject. "Why was he here anyway?"

"Ingredients," Cas mutters.

Of course. He'd told Cas to complete the spell, no matter what.

Which means - 

That someone under the table -

That must be -

The thought cuts off as Cas doubles over, coughing with such violence each one sounds like a bark. Or, no, Sam realises as Cas' head snaps up, pupils blown, upper lip curling - these are barks that sound like coughing.

"Whoa!" Sam fights his instinct to step back and holds his ground, throwing up his arms palms forward, not wanting to fight Cas if he can help it. In the corner of his eye he sees Dean doing the same.

"Cas? Cas!" Dean calls, stepping closer. "Come on, stay with us." Cas circles his head round to watch Dean's approach, making low grunting noises in the back of his throat, but Dean doesn't falter. "Cas!" 

All at once Dean closes the distance between them, lunging forward to grip both of Cas' upper arms. Cas snarls, once. Struggles for a moment. Then stops. He takes a shuddering breath and straightens his back, pupils constricting. 

A remarkable coincidence that - Cas regaining control of himself twice now while being held by Dean.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs, head bowed. "It... it comes and goes. Sometimes I can fight it. Sometimes..."

"It's okay," Dean says, moving a hand to squeeze Cas' shoulder. "We can fix this. We'll get Rowena to undo the spell. I've seen her do it before."

"If we can find her," Sam adds, cautious of the optimism in Dean's tone, intimately familiar with it's influence. A rosy tint might not conceal the truth, but it can obscure it to similar effect.

"We'll find her."

The tone broaches no argument, and Sam knows it for his own from no so long ago - _make the spell happen_. Hears an echo of a shared mantra that had made a similar sound within these very walls - _for Dean_. And for a second he feels light-headed. Dizzy. Like he's been running in circles.

"We'll find her," Dean repeats. "And we'll make her undo the spell."

"And if she won't?"

"We'll. _Make. Her._ " The way Dean turns his head from Cas puts his face in shadow for a moment, eyes shaded. "That's what we do, isn't it? We get what we want. Whatever it takes."

It's not cold in the black. It's not anything. But Sam shivers. Not because of the shame or the criticism in Dean's tone, but rather at the lack of it. At the simple resignation behind the words, falling heavy and hopeless, like the dead limb of a tree after a lightening strike.

"Or..." wheezes Cas. "There is another option."

Sam shifts his gaze quickly, eagerly, to him. 

"We'd need... my blade," Cas continues. "I... I dropped it after... next to..." 

He trails off, nodding over Sam's shoulder and Sam spins round, understanding. He moves back to Crowley's body in a rush, desperate for anything that will give them another choice. Desperate to shake Dean's new, unnerving commitment to torture and god knows what else. Desperate for an option he can actually feel proud of.

It doesn't take long to find the blade, lying only a few feet from Crowley's head, darkened with blood from tip to hilt. Sam snatches it up and dashes back.

"Got it."

"Good... yes..." Cas glances from Sam to Dean and back again. "Yes," he repeats, nodding. "It's better if... if you use it."

Sam nods in return, more than willing to help.

"Use it how?"

Cas takes a breath. Looks Sam in the eye.

"On me."

At first the pause that follows is expectant. Sam even lifts his eyebrows at Cas to encourage him to continue.

It's Dean who first recognises Cas' instruction as a complete sentence, passing the truth onto Sam in the way his nails dig deeper into Cas' shoulder, and the silence grows tense. Dean shifts just a fraction. Moving closer to Cas perhaps, but Sam can't help but notice how Dean's body is now positioned directly between him and Cas, like a shield, and all at once the blade feels hot and heavy in Sam's hand.

"Yeah, that's not gonna happen," Dean says.

"Dean -" Cas tries.

"No."

"But -"

"I said 'no,' Cas! _Sam!_ "

This last is snapped over Dean's shoulder and Sam starts at being addressed directly.

"Lower the damn blade!"

Looking down Sam is surprised to find he's twisted the blade round, tip pointing forward, arm raised. Or perhaps he's not surprised. Because is it so strange, really, that his instincts should see him ready any weapon for battle? Isn't that any hunter's first impulse - to kill?

" _Sam_ ," Dean snaps again and Sam takes a sharp breath, forcing the tension from his arm and fingers, forcing himself to hold the blade loosely at his side. 

"Dean, please," Cas says. "I can't fight this forever."

"You don't have to," Dean answers, calmer, his vice-like grip on Cas easing up as he turns back to him. "You just need to hold on until we find Rowena."

"Which will be no easy task," Cas responds, holding Dean's gaze. His voice still wavers at times but seems to be growing stronger with every word. Strengthened, perhaps, by his resolve, by the promise of some purposeful course of action, however grim. Or maybe by the hold Dean still has on him. It's hard to say. "She is, as you say, in the wind."

"So we'll keep you somewhere quiet while we search. Somewhere safe."

"The bunker?" Cas shakes his head. "It will not hold me. When this... this power overwhelms me, I am little more than an animal. And an angel in such a state is... is..." He breaks an arm free from Dean to wave his hand at the bloody corpse on the floor. "It took everything I had not to pick that body clean. To the _bones!_ " With his jaw painted red and wide eyes flashing the same, it's not hard to see the animal Cas describes. "This time it was Crowley. Next time it could be anyone. It could be you..." He stops for a moment, swallowing something back. "Or _Sam_ ," he adds with emphasis, as if this were final, irrefutable, proof of his argument. "When I lose control, and I _will_ lose control, you will not be able to contain me."

"We'll figure something out," Dean insists, turning from Cas' fevered gaze and taking a step away, tugging at Cas' jacket to make him follow. "Just -"

But Cas holds fast, jerking from Dean's touch with such violence that, though he hates himself for it, Sam curls his fingers tighter about the angel blade once more.

"What will you figure out?" Cas demands, breathing heavy through his nose, voice growing hard. "If you recall, the last time I allowed myself to be corrupted by a greater power it took the aid of Death himself to stop me. Perhaps you think he can once again be persuaded?"

The question is rhetorical, infused with more than enough sarcasm to make it clear Cas doesn't believe Death can help them. 

Little does he know how right he is.

Dean purses his lips and Sam can't tell if the glance towards him is his brother looking for comfort in their shared knowledge, or if Dean is simply trying to hide his shame from Cas. All he knows is that the flat shape of Dean's mouth and the fleeting anguish in his eyes look a lot like guilt and it makes Sam wonder - does he _regret_ his choice? Does Dean wish it was _Sam_ he'd swung that scythe at after all?

"Yeah, no..." Sam mutters. "Death's not an option."

Perhaps he senses something from the tone, because Cas doesn't appear to take Sam's words as agreement. Instead he cocks his head at Sam, eyebrows drawing together. Quizzical, Sam identifies from the movement. Though the blood staining Cas' face and eyes warp the gesture, adding a sense of anger, of danger, that sees Sam adjust his grip on the blade. Only for him to relax it again, uncertain, when Cas lifts his head in a glance so sure and steady it looks practically serene. 

What use are our eyes, Sam thinks, suddenly desperate, when they don't show us what we need to see?

"You're right," Dean nods to himself after a moment. "You're right. Death's not an option."

Though the words mimic Sam's, they sound different coming from Dean. He changes the emphasis, stresses the 'not' and softens the 'death,' removing the capital. 

"Not for us," Dean continues and his voice grows dull, weighted down again by that resignation from before. "For anyone else, oh sure, but not us. You can bet that when it's our asses on the line we will do anything, whatever it takes, we will fight tooth and nail, we will deal and cheat each other out of it. No matter what." He stares ahead, into the distance. Into nothing. And the light reflects off his eyes, turning them white, until he shifts them down and the shade of his lids leaves them black. Either way, unreadable. "No matter who we throw to the fire along the way."

For a second an image of Charlie, fiery hair and vibrant smile, burns at the table behind Dean. She lifts her face to Sam and nods in greeting, only to be swallowed up by his memory of funeral flames. Though Sam closes his eyes, he can't block out the vision and, worse, a new one swims into being - a bathtub, porcelain base and sides coated with liberal splashings of blood. 

When Sam blinks his eyes open again, hurried, throat grown tight, he finds no comfort from Dean, whose expression is still unnervingly blank. In Cas, however, he finds a matching pain at least, and then something more - lashes flicking down in shame, Cas' head turning a fraction towards the table behind him. And the shadowy form underneath. 

"You two," Dean continues, looking between them, and his voice startles Cas and Sam, their gaze snapping back to him as one. "You moved Heaven, Earth, Hell and everything in between to keep me breathing. You wouldn't let me go -" His stare holds on Cas who stills under it, transfixed. "Even when I begged you." Then he switches to Sam, who stops trying to figure out when Dean might have begged Cas for death and instead fidgets under his brother's attention, squirming, wanting to escape but at the same time unable to look away. "Even when it wasn't death I was asking for. And Sammy -" Sam holds his breath, steels himself for whatever new judgement his brother plans to pass on him now. Ready, as he'd been when kneeling on that dusty floor beneath the scythe, to accept it, to face whatever punishment Dean deems appropriate. "I sold my soul, and worse, I bargained with yours, to keep you alive." Surprise hits like icey water and Sam can only gape. He hadn't expected Dean to note any specifics of his own actions in this list of sins. "And that's just a fraction, isn't it? Of what I've done - what we've done, for each other."

He pauses and Sam takes the silence as a cue.

"I - yeah... yeah..." he nods, hanging his head, supplicant. "We need to stop," he concludes, anticipating Dean's argument. The same one Death had led him to before. A final end to their constant battle to save each other.

Sam had rejected the idea then, though it hadn't felt like it at the time. 

At the time it seemed so clear to him that yes, his death was the solution. But not the way Dean and Death described. Not as the means of keeping Dean enslaved to the Mark for always, removing the supposed threat they posed to the world forever. No, what Sam saw was his death as the means of Dean's salvation, necessary to give Cas enough time to complete the spell, and necessary as well to ensure a free life for his brother after. A life no longer burdened by the need to save and protect Sam, no longer plagued by impossible Sophie's choices that Sam's existence forever forced Dean to make, and as such, a life no longer subject to the terrible consequences those choices inflicted. 

By giving his life to save Dean, Sam saw an end to their struggle. Saw his brother, and so the world, as better off, as finally free.

Well. 

He'd been wrong about the world.

And he sees now he was wrong to think that dying to complete the cure was an end to anything between him and Dean. Was anything but more of the same.  
He wonders how Dean thinks to end things now.

The thought of killing Cas is clear agony to him. Which comes as no surprise. Though Sam wonders if Dean's fervour thus far has to do with whatever happened between them when Cas confronted Dean after his revenge spree against the Stynes. When Sam finally arrived at the bunker Cas had said simply that Dean 'overpowered' him and left. But while Cas seemed blemish free, Sam had noticed tell-tale stains on parts of his collar that spoke of more to the story - stains that were conspicuously absent later after Cas took a trip to the bathroom, and its mirror, to wash his hands of dirt and other grime accumulated from tidying the aftermath of the Stynes' visit. Considering Sam's own fight with Dean later, he doubts that the 'overpowering' was a civilised affair, and suspects Dean's urgent need to find and save Cas to be motivated in part by guilt and a need to atone.  
If Dean is returning to his greater good philosophy, though, perhaps he has something more radical in mind.

Cas' death would be less of a blow if Dean were to share the same fate, for instance. And a suicide pact between the three of them would be a neater option than one of them remaining alive and alone, as Dean had been faced with when he still had the Mark.

Before, Sam would have recoiled from the idea. But now -

Now, surrounded by undeniable evidence of the darkness their lives inflict on the world, he finds himself half way to embracing the plan already.

Which is why it's such a shock to hear Dean scoff in reply.

" _Stop?_ " he repeats, almost scandalised. "No. Why stop now? Why stop, when this is obviously the one thing we are actually _good_ at!"

There's emotion lighting up Dean's face now, finally. His lips parted, eyes ablaze. But the sight leaves Sam missing his brother's blank resignation, because there's something frightening about this passion, about the way the corner of Dean's lips flicker in a smirk better suited to black eyes than green. 

Sam opens his mouth to protest, but Dean hurries on.

"Just look at how far we've come!" he exclaims, extending both arms into the black, eyes fixed on Sam. "We've crossed lines there's no coming back from. Don't you see? We're _already damned_." He turns to point at Cas, waving a hand up and down him as he speaks. "Any more blood keeping you alive puts on our hands ain't gonna make a difference. Not now."

Absurdly, an old english teacher comes to mind, glowing half formed like remembered shapes behind closed eyelids. Mr Byron, with his thick rimmed glasses and uneven mustache, walking between desks with his battered copy of _Macbeth_ and booming theatrically.

_I am in blood_  
Stepped in so far that  
should I wade no more  
Returning were as tedious as go o'er. 

Now class, tell me. What does that _mean?_

"Damned?" Cas repeats. "I don't... do you, do you mean the boy?"

"Boy? What boy?" Dean blinks, distracted.

"There was..." Cas falters, head dipping, stopping just shy of looking over his shoulder. The shadow beneath the table seems to grow darker. "The cure, for the Mark it... it required specific..." He stutters, but Sam thinks not from the strain of the spell this time. No, Cas' struggle to explain stems from the same place as Sam's silence with Dean about the details of the cure. Both unwilling to face the reality of their actions by giving voice to them. "It needed something Rowena loved," Cas forces out in a rush. "There was... there was a child..."

Dean's eyebrows shoot up.

"A kid?" He whips his head round to Sam. "You killed a kid for me?"

The bluntness of the question takes Sam's breath away and he can only look, pleading, at Cas. He'd known, of course he'd known, from the moment Cas looked into Rowena's mind and uttered the name 'Oscar,' what the final ingredient for the cure must entail. But perhaps it's not as bad as Dean describes, perhaps -

"Well he was... he was far from a child when Rowena... when we..." Cas tries. "In fact his life had been unnaturally -"

"Okay, right," Dean cuts him off, brisk and matter-of-fact. "I'm sure his age totally justified his murder, huh Cas?"

Whether Cas withstands Dean's look this time or not Sam can't say, he's too busy staring down. In trying to avoid the now unbearable presence beneath the table, his eyes are drawn instead to the blood still coating the fingers of his free hand, staining his skin, seeming to soak into his very bones. Another line of Shakespeare seems appropriate.

_Out, damned spot!_

Dean's laughter, dry and mirthless, is like the final nail in a coffin. The scratch of a noose about their necks.

"No," he says. "No, that's not what I meant. In fact, on the list of our crimes, human sacrifice ranks pretty low compared to _ending the world._ " 

Sam glances up in time to see Dean's eyebrows lift as he adds, seemingly as an afterthought -

"Again."

At his side, Cas looks between Dean and Sam in confusion.

"I don't understand." 

"We're the reason the lights went out," Dean tells him.

But Cas only tilts his head.

"What lights?"

There's a beat in which Dean keeps up his humourless grin, waiting for Cas to compensate for his sometimes overly literal thinking and recognise the phrase as idiom. 

Then another beat passes and Dean draws his head back in disbelief.

" _What lights?_ " he repeats. "Are you kidding me? You really don't know?"

Cas turns to Sam with a would-be comical shrug, eyebrows and shoulders lifting and dropping in sync. Except that all the blood makes it diabolic, like he's shrugging away a slaughter. 

"You haven't noticed how dark it is?" Sam presses, sharing his brother's amazement, and a part of him delights in that, that he and Dean should once again be united, even in something so small.

"My mind has been rather _occupied_ of late," Cas mutters in response, disgruntled, and for a few seconds it's surprisingly domestic - like any time Sam and Dean have teased Cas about some part of human life his angel upbringing has kept him ignorant of. "I haven't given much thought to the weather, no."

"The weather, wow..." Dean says. "You really don't have a clue, do you?"

"About _what?_ " Cas snaps

Dean waves a hand around the angel's body.

"About the fact that you're the only reason we can see each other at all, for one," he answers. "Your Tinkerbell routine is literally the only light we got."

"My -" Cas starts, glancing up. Then he stops and stares, face turning slack as his eyes follow the still falling patterns of light floating around them. "Oh..." he breathes after a moment. "I didn't... this is..." He sighs. "I've been drawing on my grace, to fight the spell... I didn't realise it had begun to manifest physically. The light you can see is the enchantment slowly consuming it. Eventually, of course, it will destroy my grace completely, and move on to the rest of me."

A deep silence follows this, all of them watching the constant fall and dissolve of the feather-like shapes in the glow without speaking. They'd seemed so beautiful. _Were_ so beautiful.

Is it the world that's wrong, Sam thinks, that makes such terrible things so compelling to watch, or is it some flaw in their perception?

"So the light at the end of our tunnel," Dean intones. "Is you dying." He hums an aborted laugh, nothing but a rumble in the back of his throat. "Figures."

"Can't you do anything to... to stop it? Slow it down, at least?" Sam asks, for this one moment blissfully unaware of all else but concern for his friend.

The light shrug and shake of his head Cas responds with isn't comforting.

"Perhaps..." he answers, staring to the distance as he thinks. "The harder I resist, the faster the spell consumes me. I could... theoretically, if I were to, to allow some of its effects to reach me, that might slow the destruction. It might even be _easier_ to withstand the spell that way. Resisting it all at once like this is... exhausting... with greater risk of it overwhelming me completely." He blinks back to himself. "But..." He looks up to Sam and Dean, almost childlike. "It would risk making me, not entirely lucid. My behaviour could grow feral. And this light that you say is all we can see by would be lost."

"But you'd live longer?" Dean asks.

There's only the briefest of hesitations before Cas nods, "Yes."

"Do it," Dean tells him without any hesitation at all.

They hold still, staring like there's nothing in the world but each other. Then the moment's over in a blink and Cas is breathing in, eyes drifting shut. 

So insidious is the dark, it's not until Cas' light has faded to a single spotlight around the three of them that they realise whatever Cas is doing is working. Or, well, doing at least one thing as predicted anyway.

After the reminder of what it is not to be in darkness, Sam can't help but gasp at the thought of returning to the black.

The sound jerks Cas out of his meditation and he too breathes in sharply at how small a space their vision has been reduced to, recognising for the first time that it is no ordinary night falling about them.

"What is it?" he chokes. His voice sounds scratchy again.

If only we knew, Sam thinks. 

"Here." Dean holds out a hand instead of an answer. "We'll show you."

The light continues to ebb, shrinking until only Dean's outstretched palm and the barest outline of their faces are visible. Then the pale and crimson shape that is Cas moves in what Sam assumes is a nod by the way Cas' hand slips into Dean's a moment later. 

"Grab Sam."

Sam feels a pat on his shoulder, then Cas' fingers carefully feeling their way down his arm. He hurriedly stashes the angel blade in his belt and reaches up, feeling his way into Cas' searching hand. The blood on his own is no issue here - it can hardly stain Cas' more than they already are.

"Whatever you do," Dean tells them as the last of the light narrows to a pinprick and winks out of existence. "Don't let go." 

There's the sound of shuffling, then Cas' hand tugs Sam forward, the three of them pulled into a chain. United for now in, if nothing else, their love for each other.

So they begin their ascent. 

No more arguments, just the three of them following one after the after.

Blind.

 

~ **fin** ~


End file.
